After the revolution, the new congress needed some cash so they enacted a tax exactly like the one that sparked the war. Of course the people refused to pay it, so G. W. personally led the army to collect the money at gunpoint. Google "whiskey rebellion" for the full story.
The more I learn about the founding fathers, the more I wish I didn't have to live in the same country with them.
Now this: https://thefreethoughtproject.com/cops-device-allowing-steal-cash-innocent-citizens-atm/
Washington was a slave owner as well, lost more battles than he won (yet was still considered a great leader) and history notes, was a bit of a narcissist.
In general, football players. The sport requires tough guys, and they tend to be somewhat 'bully-ish'. Back in his high school days, my cousin had his lips ripped open by the team's top running back. ( my cousin was taking a drink from a drinking fountain at the time and his head was shoved by the bully and his mouth hit the chrome protecter thingy ) Blood all over the place. Stitches required. The bully never even made it to college football because he was just too damn dumb. I stopped watching football decades ago because I won't support or admire bullies.
Indeed, brute sports often present a stage for fatuous ogres blessed with nothing more than physical size to lord it over those lacking this genetic anomaly.
This post was edited by Don Barzini at April 8, 2018 11:43 AM MDT
Society itself didn't do it, but the apparent "Messiah" for at least part of the society pulled this stunt:
Former US President Barack Obama championed US Army Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl as a hero for having deserted his post and going over to the enemy. In the immediate aftermath of the incident and before the circumstances of his disappearance were fully known, patrols were mounted in a subsequent search for Bergdahl by fellow soldiers, a normal reaction to having someone missing in a combat situation. Reports indicate that six US soldiers died in clashes with the enemy during those searches. Six lives traded for a deserter who Obama later lauded as heroic, also before knowing all the facts.
Not to mention the terrorists who were returned to their ranks in exchange for the deserting bastard. I beg your pardon on this, but as a combat vet myself, I would have shot Bergdahl down on sight. He should have been left to die in captivity, IMO.
I can't think of many individuals but there are groups from the past who have acquired romantic glosses in some quarters at least, despite being nasty in reality.
Perhaps best-know are the old-time highwaymen, smugglers and wreckers. The last in particular were basically just cold-blooded murderers, because they knew a ship-wreck on a rocky coast at night would leave few survivors.
A friend who is an architectural historian by profession tells me of the "Bastle Houses" around the NE English / SE Scots border. Many survive, now lived in just as ordinary homes, but were built as fortified farm-houses to try to give some protection to family and livestock from rustling gangs called the "Border Rievers". He told me that although these gangs died out centuries ago, some small-time criminals from the area even now like to boast of descent from the robbers to try to justify their acts.
Also the self-called "Liberty Boys" who were a gang of hireable thugs in Boston (Mass.) in the years not long before American Independence.
Within the last century, the Kray brothers (twins who became particularly psychotic East London gangsters) gained a warped fame among some apologists.
The so-called Great Train Robbers who stole about £2M in used bank-notes from a train they held up one night in 1963, seem to have become some sort of folk-heroes to those dozy enough to think them somehow clever. My thoughts are not with these low-lifes, but with the poor driver. One of the gang coshed him so hard he never fully recovered. I believe no-one knows who, because the assailant was too cowardly ever to admit it, and the rest too cowardly to name him even on their death-beds. Perhaps it's some sort of justice that it's thought they profited far less than they had hoped from their crime.
My thoughts go toward such groups as the Vikings, the Crusaders, the Templars, the Conquistadores, and the often romanticized Pirates of the 16th and 17th centuries. These groups were all guilty of countless evils, yet their exploits were later embellished through revisionism.
One who may surprise some, I will list Mother Teresa, the vile supporter of poverty and proprietor of hundreds of squalid warehouses for the dying. Despite untold millions in donations to her operations, very little medicine or medical care was either given or available to the unfortunate poor and sick she fraudulently claimed to be serving. Much of that fortune was funnelled into the Vatican, which not coincidentally, expedited her unprecedented quick rise to Sainthood.
An editor of a San Francisco newspaper opined that if the town's historical heroes were to show up to day, they would be escorted to the city limits and firmly told not to come back. The Lady's Society told him to STFU.
One wonders who were the worse - the historical "heroes" or the Lady's [sic] Society.....
There is a widespread but peculiar idea that somehow, certain crimes or criminals must be excused, but others hounded yeah unto Eternity irrespective of facts and justice.
Not Sure 